A Time for Us - By Amy Knupp Page 0,8
counter, rinsed her hands and put her remaining lemonade in the refrigerator to save for later. She headed toward the kitchen doorway, no doubt to freshen up in the master bath before she left, as she always did. Rachel was almost home free when her mother stopped. Turned to her.
“Rachel—”
“I’m not going, Mom.”
They stared at each other, and she could see in her mom’s eyes she wanted to say so many things, wanted to run all the arguments past Rachel again, wanted to draw her into her crusade. Then her mom surprised her with a smile and a loosening of her shoulders.
“I was just going to tell you to save some food for your brother. I promised him leftovers for lunch tomorrow. He’s coming over to clean out the garage on his day off.”
Rachel breathed.
“I’m not going to push you anymore. About the benefit. I understand it’s hard for you to face right now. It’ll get easier, sweetie.”
Then her mom did something unheard of. She strode over to her daughter, brushed Rachel’s hair behind her ear, leaned down and kissed the top of her forehead.
The quiet understanding was more than Rachel could stand. She fought the tears that threatened with every fiber of her being, forced them back, sucked in oxygen to equalize herself. Her mom pulled away, finally, and Rachel felt her staring at her. Assessing.
Dammit. She couldn’t meet her gaze, not without giving away too much. Not without letting on that her mom might have hit the nail on its head.
* * *
HER MOM HAD LEFT the house ten minutes ago, and still, Rachel, who hadn’t moved from her place at the kitchen table, couldn’t get a full breath.
In spite of her very acceptable stated reasons for not participating in the planning of the asthma benefit, both Cale and her mom had jumped to the same conclusion. They both believed she couldn’t handle the task emotionally. They both believed that, in spite of the fact she’d just started a brand-new job—heck, her new career that she’d been working toward for years—in spite of the long hours, the double shifts and the learning curve of how this emergency department functioned, in spite of it all, they’d both basically accused her of not being able to face up to the task of memorializing her twin sister.
Maybe if they’d left it unspoken, it would have been easier to let it go. She could have allowed them to think what they would and gone on with her busy life. But they’d said it out loud, both of them, separately. That didn’t sit well with her.
Shaking her head in frustration, she pushed up out of her chair with more force than necessary. She took her empty plate to the counter, dumping the pork bone in the trash on the way, rinsed the dish and silverware and put it all in the dishwasher. Ignoring the nagging voice in her head, she scrubbed at the countertop her mother had cleaned less than thirty minutes ago, going after a stain that had been there since she and Noelle had painted their bedroom in honor of their sixteenth birthday. The stain had faded, but it was still clearly the electric green from Noelle’s side of the room.
Her jaw ached from the tight set of her teeth, and she consciously loosened it. She closed her eyes and tried to reason with herself.
In spite of eight hours of deadlike sleep, she still felt as though she was running on empty. It pained her to acknowledge that her job was kicking her ass this first week. Didn’t matter if that was normal or expected by other people—she wasn’t other people.
Beyond her fatigue, she no doubt looked like hell. She strode into the hall powder room, checked the mirror and verified. Yep. Her blond hair was tangled from sleep, the usual precise, off-center part looking more as if someone had thrown up a shovelful of hay and let it fall every which way. Her eyes...ugh. She widened them, tried to fake them into looking alive, but the weariness in her bones was reflected back at her from blue eyes that looked like neither hers nor her sister’s. The eyes of a stranger.
Her clothes—an old pair of cutoff denim shorts and a faded SeaWorld T-shirt her mom had brought back from a conference aeons ago—weren’t appropriate for leaving the house, let alone for going to a meeting of any kind. Come to think of it, she had no idea what would be